Chapter XII: Those Left Behind

Night had taken possession of the Post. Over-flowed by the shadows, the palisades were invisible, and the buildings ranged on the edge of the canal formed a single confused mass along the base of which the gliding water lapped monotonously. The dreary slopes of the Pou-Kas were lost in night and the whole world, smothered under a sky heavy with rain, seemed nothing but a limitless gulf.

Leaning on the balustrade of the veranda, Pierre, who had been back for over an hour, watched the darkness. In the court, a body of riflemen and mahouts were working feverishly in getting ready for the coming expedition. Somewhere or other the sound of the flute rose gently, lulling the night.

Turning back to the dining room, where the boy was at his work, he asked:

"What o'clock is it?"

"The second watch has just struck, sahib."[10]

[Footnote 10: The night-watches are four in number, of three hours each, beginning at six o'clock in the evening.]

Pierre strode nervously up and down the veranda. The silence deepened. Finally, not being able to stand it, he asked:

"About how long ago did Mademoiselle go out?"

The boy, a rough Méo with thick hands and a bony face, whom the priest had engaged for the young people, stopped in the doorway.

"She came just before they sounded the first night-watch, and she started out again immediately."

Pierre stepped up to him quickly.

"What! She said something, and you didn't tell me?..."

The Méo fixed his expressionless eyes on Lursac.

"The sahib did not...."

"Idiot!" cried Pierre. "What did she say? Tell me quickly!"

Flurried, and his broad forehead wrinkled in a frown, the other murmured:

"Mademoiselle said, 'If the gentleman asks for news, you will tell him that I have returned to the house of the Cross.'"

Lursac drew himself up abruptly.

"To the Mission?" said he, in surprise. "How strange that we didn't cross each other on the way!"

He reflected for a moment.

"What horse did she take?"

The boy bent his head and looked up at him.

"She went on foot."

Pierre remarked his hesitating and uncomfortable expression.

"On foot? To go seven miles? What sort of nonsense are you telling me?"

He grasped the man by the shoulder and shook him.

"You know something! Where has she gone?"

The Méo opened his large hands and spread out his arms:

"I don't know anything, sahib ... I swear. Only what Mademoiselle told me to tell you and that she started on foot.... That's all. Yes, really and truthfully."

"Ah!" said Pierre.

And in spite of himself his voice trembled. Understanding that he would get nothing more out of him, he flung the boy from him. A vague distress had taken possession of him. He went to the balustrade of the veranda again.

The flute was now silent. A slant of wind went whirling into the darkness, a hoarse call sounded from somewhere.... The minutes crawled by....

Anxiously, with his face stretched towards the forest, Pierre searched the night with his glance. The noises of the mountain reached him, distinct, and apparently nearer. The same hoarse cry rose again on the slope of the mountain and, echoing back from the river, died away slowly. Then other cries arose, multiplied and mixed in the depths of the underwoods. And almost immediately from one slope to the other of the mountain the people of the forest awoke and took up the rough discordant song, the wild song of the free forest. The coughing of hunting tigers mingled with the snarling of panthers; the sudden trumpeting of a herd of elephants crashing through the silence filled with its sonorous flourishes of sound the shadows already heavy with the distressed bellowing of a stag at bay and the screeching cry of a pair of nocturnal birds of prey wheeling over the plain.

Thick, heavy clouds had accumulated overhead, rolling up in billows like a stormy sea. A few warm, heavy drops fell and drummed on the dry rustling straw of the hut roofs. Then suddenly, like a waterfall, the rain beat down in a roar. Lursac shuddered.

"No," he murmured to himself, "she is not at the Mission. However," he at once thought, "she told the boy that she was going there and I have never yet known her to say anything that was not true. Perhaps, as I was late in coming back, she wanted to know the arrangements we had made...."

Buoyed up by this hope, he thought:

"Yes.... It must be that. But why on foot? Why?"

His anxiety suddenly greater, he burst out:

"I cannot wait any longer, I must know. Whatever it is, I am going over there."

Turning round, he cried to the boy:

"Sao! I am going to the priest's house. If Mademoiselle comes in while I am gone, send someone at once to tell me."

And in a few strides he was down the steps.

Before the quarters of the riflemen he stopped for a moment to give orders to the corporal:

"Have the gate opened and the sampan ready to cross the canal; I am going to the Mission."

And he made rapidly towards the stables.

* * * * *

Through the rain which fell continuously the pony galloped, with his hoofs splashing into the spongy soil of the plain and the mud squirting up at every step.

Regardless of the water which whipped his face in the squalls, with his eyes intent on piercing the darkness, Pierre pushed his mount brutally, and the poor animal was gasping, his breath coming heavily and his legs laboring, while a bitter smell of sweat mounted from his skin.

Then suddenly a blackness still blacker than the surrounding dark showed where the stockades of the Mission stood. They took shape, framing the narrow entrance-gate defended by its heavy door of solid wood reënforced with beams.

Down off his horse in an instant, Pierre called out. Minutes, which seemed appallingly long, went by. Then the door grated halfway open, and the young man, violently pushing to one side the convert who had come to admit him, dashed forward and ran. He crossed the court, which was now wrapped in sleep, and strode up the steps leading to the missionary's cabin. Suddenly, as he reached the veranda a hope relaxed the tension. His heart beat more naturally and more calmly. Through the chinks of the door rays of light filtered out.

"She is there: they are still talking," he sighed.

He grasped the latch, but instantly his agony returned, for the door opened, and in the doorway, with a lamp in his hand, stood Father Ravennes. He was completely dressed, and wrapped in a waterproof cloak.

"Who is there?"

He raised his lamp so that the light fell upon Pierre and quickly came towards him.

"Lursac! Great Heavens! What a state you are in! I was this very minute coming to the Post.... You know, then?"

In a hoarse voice, Pierre cried:

"Wanda? Where is Wanda?"

The priest looked at him. He saw the tortured face of the young man, his eyes shining with distress, his soaked and muddy clothes. His voice softened:

"Come in," said he, "come in.... I want to speak to you."

He took Pierre by the arm and drew him into the room. Flinging himself on the only stool, Lursac drooped his head and closed his eyes.

The priest had put the lamp on the table. He came up to Pierre and thoughtfully looked the young man over.

A long silence fell while each followed his own thoughts. Then Pierre, raising his eyes to the missionary, asked:

"You ... you have not seen her, have you?"

His voice trembled and seemed ready to break at any minute. He stopped.

The priest looked down on him slowly. Finally, he shook his head.

"No, but she has written to me."

He rummaged in his pocket and stretched out a leaf of paper to the young man.

"Here!" he said. "Read it!"

Pierre sat up suddenly; a spasm passed over his face. In a voice suddenly changed, he asked:

"She has written to you?... To _you_?... Why?"

"Read it!" repeated the priest, gently.

Snatching the letter from the hand of the missionary, Pierre read:

"_Dear Father: I dare not write to Pierre. I have seen Jieng.... The pilgrimage of the sixth month starts this evening for its mysterious meeting place, the location of which I do not know. I only know that Michael is alive. I have managed to join the women who are going and I have not courage enough to wait for Pierre's expedition. Anyway, he would have refused to take me! Tell him; and both of you pardon me the anxiety which I am going to cause you.... WANDA._"

Pierre blanched. He cried out:

"They have enticed her into an ambush ... she is lost! ... lost!..."

His heart seemed to break. He raised his drawn face to the priest.

"Ah! you don't know; I love her.... I love her.... We've been engaged for two days ... a secret engagement ... and I have held her in my arms, and still upon my lips is the very imprint of...."

The missionary took his hands:

"My poor boy," said he, "I understand your agony, but nothing is lost. I have sent one of my men, the one I can trust best, to Jieng's village. He has orders to pick up Mademoiselle Redeski's track and to note carefully any signs which may serve to make our search easy. Wait for him...."

"Ah!" said he, "we are losing time! And Wanda...."

The priest leant from the window to listen to the multiple voices which the silence of the night carried.

"No," replied he, "we can do nothing before dawn."

And he repeated:

"Let us wait."

Slowly the minutes drifted away, one by one, long and mournful. Minutes, hours, a portion of the night.... Pierre kept no count. He strode up and down the narrow room. On the mats his feverish footsteps rustled dryly. From time to time, tired, with his mind empty, he stood still and listened. Through the open window the continuous noise of the rain penetrated into the room and filled it with an all-pervading whisper in the midst of which the splashing of a stream of water from the roof mingled its own special sad and haunting note. Again he set himself to pacing up and down between the lowly folding bed and the bare wall, in the middle of which shone the only ornament of the chamber, a great ivory crucifix, pale and suggestive.

The third night-watch struck, and then the fourth, and still the time drifted away.

Rigid, in the same position, his breast supported by the window ledge, Father Ravennes stood silent and thoughtful. Finally drawing himself up, he said:

"Here he is...."

Pierre rushed to the door and flung it open.

"Well?" cried he.

Muddy, drenched with rain, his features drawn with fatigue, the man entered, speechless.

Under his arm he held a parcel which he spread out on the ground. Clothing unrolled from it and a woman's boot fell against the foot of the bed.

Pierre gave a cry.

"Wanda's clothes!"

"Yes," said the man, "which I found in Jieng's hut, hidden under the sleeping bench; that's all I found!"

He leaned, panting, against the wall.

"And she? She? ..." asked Pierre.

"No trace, sahib. After searching all the huts in the village, nothing.... Then I ran into the forest, I called, I shouted, I looked...."

He lifted up his bleeding hands and showed his body torn with scratches, and repeated:

"Nothing.... They must have taken her into the Dead Country."

The priest looked at him steadily.

"Listen," said he, slowly, "we are going to start tomorrow. You and Pâa, you are the only ones in whom I put my trust, the only ones also who know the country. You will come with us as guides."

The man shivered: his face went gray.

"Men," he whispered, "do not go into the Dead Country."

The missionary, taking him sternly by the arm, fixed his eyes upon the man's.

"You will come with me," said he, yet more sternly.

The savage bowed his head.

"With you ... very well, Father!"

Father Ravennes patted his shoulder in a friendly way:

"That's right," said he, "I knew it ... good!... Go and get ready."

He went back to Pierre.

"We will save her, Lursac; her and Redeski."

The young man bent his head despairingly.

"Remember Odend'hal, Robert, Paris and the others: Longères ... Dorcel...."

Heavily he lapsed into silence. Before his eyes the tragic victims of Indo-China's history rose, one by one: Odend'hal, enticed into the hut of the Fire King, the mysterious and all-powerful chief of the sorcerers, and treacherously beaten to death with bludgeons and then burnt; Robert, attacked at his post in broad daylight and assassinated, with twenty-four wounds in his body; Longères, who had disappeared in this very place, disappeared without anyone ever having succeeded in finding out what had become of him; and, finally, Dorcel, brought back to Saigon in agony, and who died of an unknown disease without even having regained consciousness.

He shuddered. It seemed to him at that moment that the universal terror which lay upon this whole region was beating on the Mission, that it found its way into the room in which the two of them stood--the only ones of their race--alone in the middle of the immense Lao-ese forest in which prowled invisible powers and unknown rulers.

"We will find her," repeated the missionary insistently.

Pierre raised his head.

"Yes," said he, "but how? We are two--two against a whole people. And then, where have they taken her? We have no idea whatever! What shall we do? Search the whole mountain range? Beat the entire forest?"

He gave a gesture of despair.

Motionless, Father Ravennes considered. Suddenly an idea flashed into his mind. He stepped up to the young man and with his two hands on Pierre's shoulders, he spoke:

"Come, Lursac, pull yourself together. You must keep your self-control above everything. We will find your fiancée! Listen: what we have got to do is to reach this sanctuary to which the pilgrimages are made."

His voice sounded calm and solemn. The atmosphere of anguish which had filled the chamber seemed put to flight. A feeling of certainty and tranquil force took its place, relaxing Lursac's nerves and restoring his balance. Almost calm, he answered:

"Yes, but where are we to look for the sanctuary? Do you know?"

"No," admitted the missionary, "but that is what we are going to find out. Come."

He went out. Almost persuaded, Lursac followed him. Together they crossed the court towards the huts of the converts, the pointed roofs of which could be seen over the dark mass of the chapel.

It was no longer raining. From the thatched roofs, still wet, and from the bending trees the moisture continued to drip. And under the vast silence of the heavens, across which the clouds were still driving in wandering squadrons, there was no sound heard now but the sharp, distant noise of the dripping on the earth.

Before the door of a hut marked with a white cross the priest stopped and banged on it with his fist. The wood of the door rattled, and while a voice from inside began asking questions, he entered, Lursac following him. He pushed back the door and lighted a torch. On the sleeping bench set against the wall a woman was sitting up, bending forward, half-dressed.

Pierre seized the arm of the missionary, gripping it strongly.

"The wild Stieng woman whom you saved," said he; "I understand now."

And he looked at the young woman with anxiety. Would she know anything, and could she be made to speak?

Father Ravennes sat down. With a gentle movement he took the hands of the woman. She raised her head. Her face, which the flickering torch brought into relief with purple shadows, appeared young and almost pretty, in spite of the short and flattened nose, and of the small suspicious eyes deeply sunk under a rounded forehead. The thin, clearly cut lips trembled, giving to the whole face an air of knowing intelligence, an appearance strangely mobile and alive, almost feline.

The missionary riveted on her his grave, compelling eyes.

"Listen," said he. "When I found you this morning by the gate, dying, tortured with hunger and thirst, half mad with terror, I didn't ask whence you came or who you were; I didn't question you at all. I took you in and took care of you and protected you without thinking of the hatred and the vengeance that my action might bring on me."

He stopped a moment and looked at her still harder. He spoke slowly in the Banhar dialect, while Lursac standing beside him watched the woman's face for the effect of his words. She listened to the priest attentively, trying to understand all his meaning.

After a moment, looking down, she said simply:

"I know your goodness, Father!"

Then with a note of supplication in her voice she asked:

"You will keep me with you?"

The missionary promised:

"Whatever happens you shall stay here as long as you wish. But in my turn, today I have need of your help. Will you give it?"

"What can I do?" she asked.

"Answer the questions I am going to put to you. Answer them without evasion and without trickery, freely and loyally."

And he repeated sternly the question which she had avoided a few seconds earlier.

"Will you?"

She shut her eyes and bent her head.

"Yes," said she. "What I know I will tell you truly."

Father Ravennes sighed heavily: his face relaxed. He threw a glance sideways at Lursac. For several moments he did not speak, concentrating his thoughts; then forcing the young woman to look at him he asked:

"It was this evening that the pilgrimage of the sixth month began, was it not?"

She shivered, turning away her eyes and slowly made a sign in the affirmative with her head.

"Good!" said the priest. "Where was it to start from?"

In a very low voice she said:

"From the third clearing above the village. From there...."

"From there?"

She got up suddenly, a look of distress on her face and an air of listening.

"From there?" insisted Father Revenues.

She stood rigid in the middle of the room.

"I cannot ... I cannot," she murmured. "If they knew that I had told you this they would kill me."

"Come now," growled the priest, "no pretences, please. No one will know what you are saying. We are alone with you.... Speak."

She broke out wildly.

"I don't want to die, and they are all round us. Listen! You can hear them walking, quite close to us! No, I am not lying. Come, look for yourself."

As she spoke, she had taken the priest by the hand and was pulling him towards the door. Violently she pushed the heavy slab, which slammed back against the wall. A fresh smell of wet earth and damp herbage blew into the room. Standing on the threshold of the hut the missionary shot a quick glance around him. The dawn was already on its way. In the clean-washed sky the innumerable stars were beginning to pale and disappear. The rising light was slowly putting the dark to flight; and before the advance of the morning which trembled on the horizon, the night was thinning out and melting into a river of shadows in the middle of which the Mission buildings stood up with vague, uncertain outlines. Round the angle of the chapel, close by, a human shadow glided, fled away and disappeared.

With her finger the young woman pointed it out to the priest.

"You see!" she cried.

And shutting the door again, she re-seated herself on the sleeping bench and remained motionless.

"Ask me anything," she said, "except what I cannot tell you, the thing that they have forbidden me to speak."

Angrily, Lursac demanded:

"They? What they? Of whom do you speak?"

She listened to him with eyes full of fear. A shudder ran through her body.

"They.... The Red Gods! ..." she whispered.

* * * * *

The two men looked at each other. The flickering flame of the torch lit up their pale faces twisted anew with anguish. For the first time the names of the unknown gods whom the mysterious sorcerers served had been pronounced, and before their eyes swam blood-stained visions.

The torch, burned down to its socket, began to splutter and a heavy smoke filled the room with an acrid fog, and suddenly with a last leap of flame it expired. Cold and livid, the dawn filtered into the hut.

Pierre thought of Wanda. Beside him the missionary repeated feverishly:

"The Red Gods!... The Red...."

Shaken with a frightful shudder the young man looked at him, and once again despair seized him in its grip.